'So ordinary,' he said, 'she's outstanding. Miss Nothing.'
'Pretty?'
'No, but not ugly. Plain. Just plain. She could do a lot more with herself than she does. She wears no makeup that I could see. Hair a kind of mousy color. Her clothes are browns and tans and grays. Earth colors. She moves very slowly, cautiously. Almost like an invalid, or at least like a woman twice her age. Once I saw her stop and hang on to a lamppost as if she suddenly felt weak or faint. Sensible shoes. Sensible clothes. Nothing bright or cheerful about her. She carries a shoulder bag but hangs on to it with both hands. I'd guess the knife is in the bag. When she confronts anyone on the sidewalk, she's always the first to step aside. She never crosses against the lights, even when there's no traffic. Very careful. Very conservative. Very law-abiding. When she went out to lunch, I thought I saw her talking to herself, but I'm not sure.'
'Edward, how long are you going to keep this up-following her?'
'You think it's morbid curiosity, don't you?'
'Don't be silly.'
'Sure you do,' he said. 'But it's not. The woman fascinates me; I admit it.'
'That I believe,' Monica said. 'Does she look sad?'
'Sad?' He considered that a moment. 'Not so much sad as defeated. Her posture is bad; she slumps; the sins of the world on her shoulders. And her complexion is awful. Muddy pale. I think I was right and Dr. Ho was right; she's cracking.'
'I wish you wouldn't do it, Edward-follow her, I mean.'
'Why not?'
'I don't know… It just seems indecent.'
'You are a dear, sweet woman,' he told her, 'and you don't know what the hell you're talking about.'
He went through the same routine on Thursday. He maneuvered so he walked toward her as she headed up Madison Avenue on her way to work. He passed quite close and got a good look at her features.
They seemed drawn and shrunken to him, nose sharpened, cheeks caved. Her lips were dry and slightly parted. The eyes seemed focused on worlds away. There was a somnolence about that face. She could have been a sleepwalker.
No breasts that he could see. She appeared flat as a board.
He was there a few minutes after 5:00 p.m., when she exited from the Hotel Granger and turned downtown on Madison. Delaney was behind her. Bentley's policewoman was across the avenue.
The suspect walked south on Madison, then went into a luncheonette. Delaney strolled to the corner, turned, came back. He stood in front of the restaurant, ostensibly inspecting the menu Scotch-taped inside the plate glass window.
Zoe Kohler was seated at the counter, waiting to be served. Everyone in the place was busy eating or talking. No one paid any attention to the activity on the street, to a big, lumpy man peering througn the front window.
Delaney walked on, looked in a few shop windows, came back to the luncheonette. Now Zoe had a plate before her and was drinking a glass of something that looked like iced tea.
If he had been a man given to theatrical gestures, he would have slapped his forehead in disgust and dismay. He had forgotten. They all had forgotten. How could they have been so fucking stupid?
He loitered about the front of the luncheonette. He looked at his watch occasionally to give the impression of a man waiting for a late date. He saw Zoe Kohler pat her lips with a paper napkin, gather up purse and check, begin to rise.
He was inside immediately, almost rushing. As she moved toward the cashier's desk, he brushed by her.
'I beg your pardon,' he said, raising his hat and stepping aside.
She gave him a shy, timorous smile: a flicker.
He let her go and slid onto the counter stool she had just left. In front of him was most of a tunafish salad plate and dregs of iced tea in a tall glass. He linked his hands around the glass without touching it.
A porky, middle-aged waitress with a mustache and bad feet stopped in front of him. She took out her pad.
'Waddle it be?' she asked, patting her orange hair. 'The meat-loaf is good.'
'I'd like to see the manager, please.'
She peered at him. 'What's wrong?'
'Nothing's wrong,' he said, smiling at her. 'I'd just like to see the manager.'
She turned toward the back of the luncheonette.
'Hey, you, Stan,' she yelled.
A man back there talking to two seated customers looked up. The waitress jerked her head toward Delaney. The manager came forward slowly. He stood at the Chief's shoulder.
'What seems to be the trouble?' he asked.
'No trouble,' Delaney said. 'This iced tea glass here-I've got a dozen at home just like it. But my kid broke one. I'd like to fill out the set. Would you sell me this glass for a buck?'
'You want to buy that glass for a dollar?' Stan said.
'That's right. To fill out my set of a dozen. How about it?'
'A pleasure,' the manager said. 'I've got six dozen more you can have at the same price.'
'No,' Delaney said, laughing, 'just one will do.'
'Let me get you a clean one,' the porky waitress said, reaching for Zoe Kohler's glass.
'No, no,' Delaney said hastily, protecting the glass with his linked hands. 'This one will be fine.'
Waitress and manager looked at each other and shrugged. Delaney handed over a dollar bill. Touching the glass gingerly with two fingers spread inside, he wrapped it loosely in paper napkins, taking care not to wipe or smudge the outside.
He had to walk two blocks before he found a sidewalk phone that worked. He set the wrapped glass carefully atop the phone and called Sergeant Abner Boone at Midtown Precinct North. He explained what he had.
'God damn it!' Boone exploded. 'We're idiots! We could have had prints from her office or apartment a week ago.'
'I know,' Delaney said consolingly. 'It's my fault as much as anyone's. Listen, sergeant, if you get a match with that wineglass from the Tribunal, it's not proof positive that she wasted the LaBranche kid. It's just evidence that she was at the scene.'
'That's good enough for me,' Boone said grimly. 'Where are you, Chief? I'll get a car, pick up the glass myself, and take it to the lab.'
Delaney gave him the location. 'After they check it out, will you call me at home and let me know?'
'Of course.'
'Better call Thorsen and tell him, too. Yes or no.'
'I'll do that,' Abner Boone said. 'Thank you, sir,' he added gratefully.
Delaney was grumpy all evening. He hunched over his plate, eating pork roast and applesauce in silence. Not even complimenting Monica on the bowl of sliced strawberries with a sprinkle of Cointreau to give i! a tang.
It wasn't until they had taken their coffee into the air-conditioned living room that she said: 'Okay, buster, what's bothering you?'
'Politics,' he said disgustedly, and told her about his argument with Ivar Thorsen.
'He was right and I was right. Considering his priorities and responsibilities, picking the woman up and getting her out of circulation makes sense. But I still think going for prosecution and conviction makes more sense.'
Then he told Monica what he had just done: obtaining Zoe Kohler's fingerprints for a match with the prints found on the wineglass at the Tribunal Motor Inn.
'So I handed Ivar more inconclusive evidence,' he said wryly. 'If the prints match, he's sure to pick her up. But he'll never get a conviction on the basis of what we've got.'
'If you feel that strongly about it,' Monica said, 'you could have forgotten all about the prints.'
'You're joking, of course.'
'Of course.'
'The habits of thirty years die hard,' he said, sighing. 'I had to get her prints. But no one will believe me when I tell them that even a perfect match won't put her behind bars. Her attorney will say, 'Sure, she had a drink with the guy in his hotel room-and so what? He was still alive when she left.' Those prints won't prove she slashed his
